30 Beautiful Lyrics About Nature – As Chosen By NME Readers

Recently on NME.com, we asked you which lyricists best capture the majesty of nature in songs. Here’s 30 of your picks, starting with this doozy courtesy of British Sea Power, picked by Ben Lowery: “you’re fractured and cold but your heart is unbroken, my favourite foremost coastal Antarctic shelf.” Ben explains: “I love the whole song. Who else could write a song about a costal Antarctic shelf?”

@liveatbrixton says Lou Reed’s ‘Last Great American Whale’ is “unbeatable”. “Americans don’t care too much for beauty, they’ll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream, they’ll watch dead rats wash up on the beach, and complain if they can’t swim”. Deep.

“From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar, When the dawn begins to crack It’s all part of my autumn almanac” sang the Kinks on the ‘Village Green Preservation Society’, and that’s what gets @benjodonovan’s vote.

@EllisBallard went for “The Marlingator”, or Laura Marling as she’s known to you and me. “Winter was on us, at the end of my nose, but I never love England more than when covered in snow” gets their vote.

@Tin_Hotha likes the lyric “lost hearts and words / That are spoken to the wind / Which blows before the rain” from Duran Duran’s ‘Before the Rain’. The track was co-produced by Mark Ronson and appeared on their 13th studio album ‘All You Need Is Now’.

Funny guy @MusicFromDrive cites “every Cypress Hill song” for their love of a certain natural herb. They could have gone a step further though and cited ‘Tequila Sunrise’, ‘Let It Rain’ or even ‘Valley of Chrome’ as specific examples.

Finally, @heatherlyoung3 goes for this mesmerizing opening line from Joni Mitchell’s ‘Sisotowbell Lane’: “Noah is fixing the pump in the rain / He brings us no shame / We always knew that he always knew / Up over the hill.”